Word.ws English Dictionary

want-to-be

want-to-be is the alternative form of wannabe.

Meaning of wannabe

Noun

wannabe (plural wannabes)

  1. (attributive, derogatory, informal, often) Someone who wishes to be someone or do something, but lacks the qualifications or talent; an overeager amateur; an aspirant.
    • Hollywood's restaurants are full of wannabe actors waiting to be discovered.
  2. (derogatory, informal) Someone who wishes to be part of, or to assimilate to, a majority group of which they are not a member.
    • Bigger, mongrelly and black, he was clearly a Doberman wannabe.2000, Bill Oddie, Gripping Yarns, page 126

Forms of want-to-be

pluralwant-to-bes

Questions about want-to-be

What is want-to-be the alternative form of?
Want-to-be is the alternative form of wannabe.

Words near want-to-be in the dictionary

  1. want to know
  2. want'cha
  3. want-away
  4. want-aways
  5. want-to
  6. want-to-be
  7. want-to-bes
  8. wanta
  9. Wantabadgery
  10. wantable
  11. wantableness

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: want-to-be (page history and authors); wannabe (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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Cite this entry: “want-to-be.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/want-to-be. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.